Istanbul, for all that ails you

Today, I feel like maybe I died and went to heaven. I am sitting in an apartment that is perched on the heights of Istanbul’s Cehangir neighborhood right across the Golden Horn from the Topkapi Palace. I stare out of the picture windows at the confluence of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. Ferry-boats of all sizes ply busily this way and that across the broad waterways. Seagulls wheel and shriek in the light mist. A tram clangs somewhere far beneath me. There is a steady hum of traffic.
Last night the towers of Topkapi, and the great rotund masses of Agia Sofia and the Blue Mosque all sat like jewels, bathed in the amber tones of great floodlighting. All the great mosques of that part of the city– and even many of the smaller ones, including the one near us in Galatasaray– are floodlit at night. The lights from Topkapi and the waterfront mosques bleed out across the water towards us. At night, each ferry-boat scuttles across the water suspended above the inky depths on the insect legs of its own reflected lights.
In the past, I have thought of Istanbul as “Venice on Steroids”: that combination of an organic reliance on waterways and their boat-systems, with the sheer weight and wealth of stupendous religious monuments. But the two cities are different in important ways, as well. Where Venice lies flat, beached (and sinking) at the top end of the Aegean, Istanbul sits astride what is evidently an extremely busy international waterway. Last year when we were here we were sitting at an outdoor restaurant near the second bridge across the Bosphorus and behind our friends as we sat there, there passed a long procession of vast tankers and container boats traveling up to the countries of the Black Sea.
And Istanbul (unlike Venice) is exuberantly 3-D: There is not a flat street in sight except those that flank the city’s many coastlines. Yesterday afternoon we walked to Istiklal Cadessi through a network of small streets that plunged up and down the hillsides here: No other way to get there! City residents must all be extremely fit! Istiklal Cadessi (Independence Street) and a very high proportion of the smaller side streets were all humming with activity. On the backstreets, there are sidewalk cafes just about everywhere. And never mind about those sloping sidewalks: The enterprising business owners have put in long platforms that give each group of tables a flat base to stand on. Okay, it pushes pedestrians into the street; but many of these small streets are actually or effectively pedestrianized, anyway.
We had dinner with Soli Ozel and his family. Great to catch up with him and hear his (generally but not wholly admiring) views of the policies of the present government. The criticisms he voiced were mainly that the government could have been smarter in some aspects of its diplomacy– especially on Iran, where he thought Turkey should have abstained on the recent resolution in the Security Council, rather than voting against it. But he did concur with the judgment that– according to Bill the spouse, who has been here since the beginning of the month– is quite widespread here, namely that PM Erdogan is one of the most talented political leaders that Turkey has ever seen.
There is, as always, a lot going on here politically. I still think that the transition Turkey has made since 1999, from what was still a military-backed system of government to one in which the democratic basis of governance has been much more solidly entrenched than hitherto, is a really important experience that democrats worldwide should hold up and appreciate. And the two facts that this transition has been achieved through almost wholly nonviolent means and that it has been undertaken largely though not wholly by a moderately and democratically Islamist party are both really, really important.
It is great to see Istanbul and the whole of Turkey doing so well in the current times! While economic woes continue to plague much of the “west” today, the course that this country has been on since the end of the Cold War has overwhelmingly been one of opening new markets and new (or, more accurately, renewed) cultural and political ties with all the countries around it in a dazzling 360-degree display of smart outreach. And the success of that outreach really shows– in the buzzing activity, self-confidence, and nice lifestyles you see in the streets here. (Istanbul is stunningly well-run as a city, too. It is significant that Erdogan and his AK Party cut their political teeth here back in the 1990s by proving they could run this city well, before they moved on to take over the commanding heights of national politics.)
Where our apartment is, here near the Galatasaray district, is not far from the area Orhan Pamuk wrote about growing up in, in his memoir “Istanbul”. The Istanbul of Pamuk’s youth was drenched in sadness, neediness, and nostalgia for the loss of the city’s past glories. The contrast with the way the city feels today could not be starker!
I feel so lucky to be here. When Bill first set up the short-term teaching gig he has at Bilgi University, the idea was that we would come together for the month. But then, I realized October would be really busy for Just World Books, so I shortened my stay to one week… Well, I am still doing a bunch of work for the three books JWB will have coming out within the next month– three! count ’em! But at least as I sit here connected to the Intertubes, I have the supreme joy of looking out over this amazing view. And then, from time to time, I can even detach myself from the ‘tubes and go out and have some real-life experiences of today’s Turkey… Wow. Even in the drizzly rain it is all spectacular.